A Return To Discipline

Will we ever see one? I'm not so sure. It's amazing to me how so many bishops can gripe and moan, in the name of collegiality, about the slightest action taken by Rome, yet completely abdicate all their responsibility in situations that demand the chastisement of the Church's admitted enemies.

Consider these stories by LifeSiteNews. The first one features the now-infamous Fr. Pfleger announcing his belief that women should be ordained. Notice how he apologizes for this announcementwhilst his heresy in the same sentence.

In the latest episode in an ongoing controversy, Fr. Michael Pfleger has again publicly voiced his support for women's ordination, this time in a comment posted to his Facebook fan page. In that comment, he also notes that the archdiocese made him issue the apology he put out on Wednesday.

“Sunday, I mentioned in my Sermon that I believe in married Priests and Woman Priests,” the Facebook comment reads. “I was then told that I had to apologize for saying it durning [sic] a Sermon because that is not allowed, even though that is my opinion.

His comment follows a Wednesday statement published on the Archdiocese of Chicago's website, which has since been removed. In the statement he admits that he advocated for women priests and bishops in his homily, but then says that, “While this is my personal opinion, I do respect and follow the Catholic Church teachings and I am sorry I failed to do this.”

What the hell? How is this not leading to a canonical trial? Why should there even be a trial? When St. Pius X wrote Pascendi, he commented on how Modernists would speak out of both sides of their mouths to hide their heresy. Now, they no longer even have to try to hide it.

Where is Cardinal George in all this?

Then you've got this story, which is actually worse than the Obama invitation to ND:

The University of Detroit Mercy, a Jesuit Catholic institution, has come under fire for failing to remove links to pro-abortion groups on its website, as well as for keeping a renowned pro-abortion, pro-same-sex "marriage" nun on its Board of Trustees.

The student advocacy group suggested that the school's insistence in keeping the links may be related to the presence of Sr. Margaret Farley, a Sister of Mercy, on its Board of Trustees. Farley, who earned her Ph.D. at Yale Divinity School, was one of 40 Catholic religious who infamously signed a 1984 statement by "Catholics for Choice" upholding abortion as justifiable from a Catholic standpoint. Several of the co-signers were subsequently excommunicated.

Since then, Farley has published her dissention from Catholic Church teaching on several key issues, including abortion, homosexuality, same-sex "marriage," masturbation, sterilization, divorce, and women priests. Many of these viewpoints are available in her 2006 book "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," in which Farley challenges the "simpler ways of interpreting human experience" of traditional Catholic values on marriage and sexuality, with a new framework for "just" sexual gratification outside of marital relations and family life.

And what's being done? Apparently a big load of nothing. How can we do anything but assume that the hierarchs don't give a crap?

In much of the recent talk about the abuse scandal, the core discussion is about how Catholic the Church should be. The Media Magisterium insists that the Church's future is to be Episcopalian. Opposing voices point to the saints. By letting heretics have their way in the above sorts of situations, we know who wins. By compromising, we know who wins. Compromise always favors revolutionaries. The only way to stop all this is to return to being Catholic, which means enforcing Catholicism, which means divesting heretics claiming to be Catholic of any illusion that they remain in the bosom of the Church.

Think of it this way. We're getting all these new Anglicans, right? Why not let the door swing both ways and swap them Fr. Pfleger & Co. for a host of Fr. Longeneckers?